Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat
Historic baselines are important in developing our understanding of ecosystems in the face of rapid global change. While a number of studies have sought to determine changes in extent of exploited habitats over historic timescales, few have quantified such changes prior to late twentieth century bas...
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The Royal Society
2012
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3396889/ |
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pubmed-33968892012-07-20 Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat Zu Ermgassen, Philine S. E. Spalding, Mark D. Blake, Brady Coen, Loren D. Dumbauld, Brett Geiger, Steve Grabowski, Jonathan H. Grizzle, Raymond Luckenbach, Mark McGraw, Kay Rodney, William Ruesink, Jennifer L. Powers, Sean P. Brumbaugh, Robert Research Articles Historic baselines are important in developing our understanding of ecosystems in the face of rapid global change. While a number of studies have sought to determine changes in extent of exploited habitats over historic timescales, few have quantified such changes prior to late twentieth century baselines. Here, we present, to our knowledge, the first ever large-scale quantitative assessment of the extent and biomass of marine habitat-forming species over a 100-year time frame. We examined records of wild native oyster abundance in the United States from a historic, yet already exploited, baseline between 1878 and 1935 (predominantly 1885–1915), and a current baseline between 1968 and 2010 (predominantly 2000–2010). We quantified the extent of oyster grounds in 39 estuaries historically and 51 estuaries from recent times. Data from 24 estuaries allowed comparison of historic to present extent and biomass. We found evidence for a 64 per cent decline in the spatial extent of oyster habitat and an 88 per cent decline in oyster biomass over time. The difference between these two numbers illustrates that current areal extent measures may be masking significant loss of habitat through degradation. The Royal Society 2012-09-07 2012-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3396889/ /pubmed/22696522 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0313 Text en This journal is © 2012 The Royal Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Zu Ermgassen, Philine S. E. Spalding, Mark D. Blake, Brady Coen, Loren D. Dumbauld, Brett Geiger, Steve Grabowski, Jonathan H. Grizzle, Raymond Luckenbach, Mark McGraw, Kay Rodney, William Ruesink, Jennifer L. Powers, Sean P. Brumbaugh, Robert |
| spellingShingle |
Zu Ermgassen, Philine S. E. Spalding, Mark D. Blake, Brady Coen, Loren D. Dumbauld, Brett Geiger, Steve Grabowski, Jonathan H. Grizzle, Raymond Luckenbach, Mark McGraw, Kay Rodney, William Ruesink, Jennifer L. Powers, Sean P. Brumbaugh, Robert Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| author_facet |
Zu Ermgassen, Philine S. E. Spalding, Mark D. Blake, Brady Coen, Loren D. Dumbauld, Brett Geiger, Steve Grabowski, Jonathan H. Grizzle, Raymond Luckenbach, Mark McGraw, Kay Rodney, William Ruesink, Jennifer L. Powers, Sean P. Brumbaugh, Robert |
| author_sort |
Zu Ermgassen, Philine S. E. |
| title |
Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| title_short |
Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| title_full |
Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| title_fullStr |
Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| title_sort |
historical ecology with real numbers: past and present extent and biomass of an imperilled estuarine habitat |
| description |
Historic baselines are important in developing our understanding of ecosystems in the face of rapid global change. While a number of studies have sought to determine changes in extent of exploited habitats over historic timescales, few have quantified such changes prior to late twentieth century baselines. Here, we present, to our knowledge, the first ever large-scale quantitative assessment of the extent and biomass of marine habitat-forming species over a 100-year time frame. We examined records of wild native oyster abundance in the United States from a historic, yet already exploited, baseline between 1878 and 1935 (predominantly 1885–1915), and a current baseline between 1968 and 2010 (predominantly 2000–2010). We quantified the extent of oyster grounds in 39 estuaries historically and 51 estuaries from recent times. Data from 24 estuaries allowed comparison of historic to present extent and biomass. We found evidence for a 64 per cent decline in the spatial extent of oyster habitat and an 88 per cent decline in oyster biomass over time. The difference between these two numbers illustrates that current areal extent measures may be masking significant loss of habitat through degradation. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society |
| publishDate |
2012 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3396889/ |
| _version_ |
1611543137551908864 |